Thanks to @NASAAdmin Jared Isaacman and his team for visiting our Moses Lake Test Site recently! Great to show off hot fires of both our Andromeda and Zenith engines as they complete their qualification campaigns.

EXCLUSIVE: @AndyLapsa, CEO of @stoke_space, joins VALLEY OF DEPTH for his first sit-down since the company's $1B raise and the unveiling of its new 15T to LEO Nova Block 2 launch vehicle. Stoke is a launch company building Nova, a two-stage rocket designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, with an upper stage that uses a hydrogen-cooled metallic heat shield and a first stage powered by a full-flow staged combustion engine called Zenith. Highlights: 01:04 – New developments at Stoke 02:16 – The Nova product family 08:19 – Meeting with Jared Isaacman 09:48 – $1B fundraise, use of proceeds 12:12 – Future production capacity 13:44 – Was this the last private funding round for Stoke? 23:46 – Why are rockets still so hard? 26:17 – Why build a full-flow staged combustion for your first stage? 29:14 – Technical hurdles that are left to solve 35:05 – Stoke's heat shield vs ceramic heat shields 39:51 – The state of the launch industry. Are we screwed in the short term? 49:00 – A payload agnostic future 51:36 – The application layer for Block 2 1:01:20 – What keeps Andy up at night? 1:02:29 – What happens after mission success? 1:06:31 – When should we expect the first flight of Block 2? Full episode 👇

Always good to get out of DC and into the field where the action is happening. From @Livermore_Lab to United Precision, @Boeing, @_Rocketdyne, and @stoke_space, we spent the last few days with the scientists, engineers, and technicians putting some of America’s most ambitious missions into motion. We saw incredible science, aerospace manufacturing, propulsion hardware for ESM, Orion, and SR-1, and wrapped it up with live Zenith and Andromeda tests at Stoke’s test site, which were extremely impressive. We have an enthusiastic and engaged President @POTUS who has given us the policy, the resources, and even a new Space Academy. We have bipartisan support from Congress, the talent of the NASA workforce, the best of industry, and a playbook that changed the world in 1969 and will do so again.

Several comments asking me about Stoke Space What they are doing (regeneratively-cooled metallic heat shield using LH2) is pretty neat and has promise. I talk sometimes about how what SpaceX did with Falcon 9 was more of an "engineering problem" (taking proven mid-TRL technology and making it work on a real system) than the issues with Starship's heat shield that I see as more of a "physics problem" (depending on your definition of "rapid" reuse). Engineering problems can be solved with iterative design and brute force. Physics problems need true advances in science and technology. All that to say, IMO what Stoke is trying to solve is an engineering problem. With the right people, enough money, and enough time, I think it will work. Anytime your design relies this heavily on hydrogen you're inviting some (incredibly small) demons to the party, but alas, not my problem. I'd love more details on their ground testing at "higher heat loads" than what is experienced in flight. But last I heard they're targeting a launch test late this year? Looking forward to finding out...

Leak shroud testing – the six-sided metal enclosure around the nozzle is designed to simulate the engine bay of the integrated rocket to identify any fuel or oxidizer leaks during a full mission duty cycle burn. This is a key test to help retire risk for stage static fire and flight.🚀

Big tank. Big tests. Big milestone. Nova Stage 1 proto-qualification is complete. 46 structural objectives verified, plus key fluid systems, avionics, software, ground systems, and ops demos. (More detail in our linked blog post.) This is where new rockets often find the hard stuff; Nova (and the Stoke team) handled it. Our local partners at the @PORTOFMOSESLAKE , the Grant County Sheriff's Office and Public Works department, plus our vendor Norco made sure we had the support we needed every step of the way. Ad Astra.✨

Testing is LIVE in Moses Lake, for both our Stage 1 structure and Zenith engines. Proud of the teams who are working relentlessly to drive us forward on the road to launch.🛣️🚀

Our Stage 1 structure is now shipped, delivered, and ready for testing in Moses Lake, WA. Standing in its full vertical orientation, this flight hardware will be thoroughly vetted before returning to Kent for some final touches before the journey to Cape Canaveral, FL begins.

Sneak peek inside our Stage 1 tank, putting the finishing touches on our integration campaign.🤩 Next week, this flight article will ship to our test site in Moses Lake, WA for protoqualification testing. Enjoying the views at Kent while it lasts!

Another day, another Zenith engine hot fire... Here we conduct a chirp test of our thrust vector control system - gimbaling the engine at increasing frequency to demonstrate control bandwidth (how fast we can respond to commands in flight). 📈

Today, on the anniversary of John Glenn's historic space flight in 1962, we raised the flag over SLC-14 for the first time since breaking ground. It's an honor to be part of America's space history – and its future. 🇺🇸🚀 Special thanks to @SLDelta45 installation commander Colonel Brian L. Chatman, Director. of @NASAKennedy Janet Petro, and @RepHaridopolos for joining us.

Stoke Space is racing to build the world's first fully reusable rockets that can launch, survive reentry, and fly again almost right away. In this episode of Hard Tech, @aaron_epstein sits down with @stoke_space co-founders @AndyLapsa and @Rkt_Da to find out why they chose to take on one of the hardest problems in rocket science, how being a smaller startup gives them an advantage, and what full reusability could unlock for the future of spaceflight. 00:00 — Intro 01:16 — Stoke Space’s mission: Rapid reusability 02:18 — Why Second Stage capsules fail reentry 03:34 — Stoke Space’s stage 2 solution 05:30 — Reusability-First Design Philosophy 07:25 — Early Engine Development & Test Strategy 10:48 — Vertical Integration & Manufacturing 11:21 — Iteration Speed as a Competitive Advantage 12:29 — Software as Core Infrastructure 14:00 — Path to Orbit & Launch Operations 15:04 — How This Could Change The World